Current rotors have an increasingly large diameter to increase wind power uptake, which, together with the need to place them at a sufficient height to reduce the cutting effect of the wind, it means that the height of the towers that support them must be increasingly high. At present, the towers exceed 100-120 m in height and their construction typically involves the use of large cranes for lifting loads that have limited availability, which makes the project more expensive.
There are currently several methods for the construction of concrete towers for wind turbines; on the one hand, there are processes where the prefabricated concrete elements are joined together to form tower sections which will be later placed one on another to form the wind turbine tower and, on the other hand, those where the tower is built in situ from a formwork with the geometry of each section of the tower which is filled with concrete and steel and it is climbed as it cures to give the height the required height.
Each process has certain advantages with respect to the other. For example, using prefabricated concrete elements shortens the assembly time of the tower with respect to building the tower completely in situ, but demands having large-capacity cranes in the wind farm location to lift loads during a greater period of time.
Furthermore, in terms of tower geometry, it is typically preferred that it has a section that decreases with height, with truncated cones being frequent. This involves modifying the geometry of the internal and external formworks with high frequency, when the construction process is in situ by means of climbing formworks, increasing the number of operations to perform and slowing down the construction time.
All these drawbacks are resolved with the invention disclosed below.